James > James's Quotes

“Let's get really fucked up and full of sentimental despair and then finally decide life, despite every heartbreak and anguished cry, is worth each pulse and breath.”
― Jim Dodge, Stone Junction

“We have missed him in the sunshine, in the storm, in the twilight, ever since. ”
― Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

“Betty died of a broken heart. Some people laugh when they hear that phrase, but that's because they don't know anything about the world. People die of broken hearts. It happens every day, and it will go on happening to the end of time.”
― Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

“Escaping into a film is not like escaping into a book. Books force you to give something back to them, to exercise your intelligence and imagination, where as you can watch a film-and even enjoy it-in a state of mindless passivity.”
― Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

“but back then, at thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty, I walked around with a feeling that my life had never truly belonged to me, that I had never truly inhabited myself, that i had never been real. And because I wasn't real, I didn't understand the effect I had on others, the damage I could cause, the hurt I could inflict on the people who loved me.”
― paul auster, Man in the Dark

“For only the good doubt their own goodness, which is what makes them good in the first place. The bad know they are good, but the good know nothing. They spend their lives forgiving others, but they can't forgive themselves.”
― Paul Auster, Man in the Dark

“Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head.”
― Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

“I had jumped off the edge, and then, at the very last moment, something reached out and caught me in midair. That something is what I define as love. It is the one thing that can stop a man from falling, powerful enough to negate the laws of gravity.”
― Paul Auster, Moon Palace

“You're too good for this world, and because of that the world will eventually crush you.”
― Paul Auster, Invisible

“All men contain several men inside them, and most of us bounce from one self to another without ever knowing who we are.”
― Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

“You can't put your feet on the ground until you've touched the sky.”
― Paul Auster

“Every life is inexplicable, I kept telling myself. No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling. To say that so and so was born here and went there, that he did this and did that, that he married this woman and had these children, that he lived, that he died, that he left behind these books or this battle or that bridge – none of that tells us very much.”
― Paul Auster, The New York Trilogy

“That's all I've ever dreamed of, Mr. Bones. To make the world a better place. To bring some beauty to the drab humdrum corners of the soul. You can do it with a toaster, you can do it with a poem, you can do it by reaching out your hand to a stranger. It doesn't matter what form it takes. To leave the world a little better than you found it. That's the best a man can ever do.”
― Paul Auster, Timbuktu

“Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.”
― Thomas Pynchon, V.

“Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so hard to give up hope.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”
― Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

“People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode.

Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Make sure, as often as possible, you are doing something you’d be happy to die doing.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Let's not forget The Things They Do To Make Themselves Happy That Actually Make Them Miserable. This is an infinite list. It includes - shopping, watching TV, taking the better job, getting the bigger house, writing a semi-autobiographical novel, educating their young, making their skin look mildly less old and harboring a vague desire to believe there might be a meaning to it all.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“If getting drunk was how people forgot they were mortal, then hangovers were how they remembered.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“No one will understand you. It is not, ultimately, that important. What is important is that you understand you.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Laughter, along with madness, seemed to be the only way out, the emergency exit for humans.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth. The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“Everyone is a comedy. If people are laughing at you, they just don't quite understand the joke that is themselves.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“So love is about finding the right person to hurt you?”
“Pretty much.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“It was, of course, another test. Everything in human life was a test. That was why they all looked so stressed out.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“You reach a certain age -- sometimes it's fifteen, sometimes it's forty-six -- and you realize the cliche you have adopted for yourself isn't working.”
― Matt Haig, The Radleys